From The CEO: Let’s take the initiative on initiatives

The $1.3bn Modern Manufacturing Initiative is the centrepiece of the strategy, promising to enable businesses to access funds in order to transform ideas into commercial reality. I’ll come back to this later, but at present full details of the Modern Manufacturing Initiative are yet to be announced.

Let’s change the subject back to some of the other aspects of the Government’s proposed funding. The Manufacturing Modernisation Fund (MMF) has $52.8m that is targeted at supporting roughly 150 companies that have a solid business plan to invest in new technology, upskill workers and create new jobs. Great idea. Great initiative. This is the second round of this Program and the early indications from the first round is that the majority of recipients have achieved revenue growth and job creation. So let’s get on with it.

We are still waiting for this second round of the MMF to open. This is what I mean by getting a handle on the overall package. We are in unprecedented times, lots of post-COVID talk, great opportunities and strong verbal commitment from our leaders. These promises need to be delivered on as soon as possible. As welcome and needed as these funding grants are for the businesses that are lucky enough to get them, the ones that allocate time and resources to put proposals in and miss out have in a lot of cases put off investment decisions in the hope of securing funds. So the timing of the grant program and funding allocations is critical.

I like the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative. Identifying existing capability, mapping that to future COVID-19 requirements and building these supply chains has a great deal of merit. COVID-19 has no doubt had an incredible impact on businesses. On a positive note, many have identified their ability to provide critical products and have taken advantage of this potential. Government support to help companies identify these opportunities, build scale and access global supply chains is welcome.

We are far from resolving this pandemic and the early indication is that Australian companies have the intellect and ability to provide these critical goods and service. Why then, are we waiting until the middle of next year to get details of the funding available? As I have said, it’s hard to get a handle on the initiatives due to the lack of detail and timeliness of actions.

Now I need to come back to the Manufacturing Modernisation Initiative, because as it has been promoted, it is the Morrison Government’s solution to unlocking the potential to deliver growth for our industry for decades to come.

There is an indication that a road map needs to be completed for each of the six targeted sectors (Resources Technology & Critical Minerals Processing, Food & Beverage, Medical Products, Recycling & Clean Energy, Defence and Space). I’m sceptical about roadmaps. Not because they are not important – more so because they inevitably have a use-by date depending on who has written them and who they have been commissioned by.

We have Industry Growth Centres, funded by the Commonwealth, that have a mandate to advise Government on what is required to help transition Australia’s highly skilled manufacturers into global leaders. Surely they have most of the answers already.

I hate the idea that roadmaps, commissioned reports and more industry consultation are going to hold up the details and rollout of this initiative. If that is the case, we will constantly be on this merry-go-round of industry-led, government-funded policy development that doesn’t produce the desired result.

The Morrison Government and Industry Minister Karen Andrews have given us the shot in the arm. The adrenalin is pumping and we are ready for activity. Manufacturing, for a while, was front page news, and rightfully so given how important it is to our nation. We can’t let it disappear back to the middle pages by taking too long to put these initiatives in place.

Shane Infanti
CEO, AMTIL